That’s because instead of using the actual 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, Obama lowers it by the $200 billion in increased deficit spending that he -- not Bush -- pushed through in the stimulus plan to address the crisis that became the Great Recession. That resulting figure is what Obama calls the deficit he "inherited" from Bush.

But no matter which figure is used, the deficit as a share of the economy still fell by more than half.

Show me the money

There's another way to look at this.

That is, in raw dollars -- the way attendees at the union event probably would. Indeed, deficits are often expressed that way as well.

The White House and CBO figures each show that in 2009 the deficit reached $1.4 trillion.

As a share of GDP, it easily topped any year since World War II, said Steve

Ellis, vice president of the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense.

By the end of fiscal year 2013, the deficit figure had fallen to $679.5 billion in dollars unadjusted for inflation.

That’s a 52 percent drop.

Here’s the year-by-year trend in 2009 dollars:

Fiscal year

Deficit

Deficit as share of GDP

2009

1,412,688,000,000

9.8 percent

2010

1,294,373,000,000

8.8 percent

2011

1,299,593,000,000

8.4 percent

2012

1,086,963,000,000

6.8 percent

2013

679,502,000,000

4.1 percent

There is one wrinkle.

When you use Obama's methodology to compare the deficit Obama inherited -- the 2009 result minus the stimulus package to that in 2013 -- the drop in the deficit is slightly under half, at 48%.

Ellis and Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, both included an additional year, the 2014 fiscal year, which is just a month from completion.

Those figures would put Obama's claim over the top no matter the number-crunching method.

Looking ahead

Ellis cautioned that talking about deficit amounts in raw dollars doesn’t really give a good sense of the scale: "A $400 billion deficit in a $10 trillion economy is a lot bigger than a $400 billion deficit in $17 trillion economy."

And he and Goldwein emphasized that while the deficit has been halved, it’s been halved from a skyscraping peak.

In the decade before deficits exploded in 2008 and 2009, they averaged just over 1 percent of GDP, including three years of surpluses, we calculated.

As of 2013, that figure was at 4.1 percent.

The growth in the deficit from 2007 to 2009 was due mainly to factors related to the Great Recession, said Goldwein. Tax collections fell as people lost jobs and corporate profits dropped; spending on food stamps and other aid programs rose with increased need; stimulus and tax break legislation passed, as did bailouts of financial firms.

"The economic recovery, wind-down of stimulus, reversal of TARP/Fannie transactions, and lower interest rates are really what has caused our deficit to fall so much," Goldwein told us. He mentioned cuts in discretionary spending as well.

Looking ahead, the CBO warns that later in the next decade deficits as a share of the economy will grow and federal debt will climb without changes in current policies.

But Obama, it’s fair to say, was speaking of the change during his presidency.

And his claim dovetails with one PolitiFact National checked in July 2013, rating True Obama’s claim that the deficit is falling at the fastest rate in 60 years.

Our rating

At a union rally on Labor Day, Obama declared "We cut our deficits by more than half."

The numbers back up Obama’s claim: Thanks to income tax revenues rising and spending on emergency assistance dropping, America’s deficit has fallen by more than 50 percent

from its highest point since World War II to a level $733 billion lower.

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